NavigationView get/find header layout

Version 23.1.0 switches NavigationView to using a RecyclerView (rather than the previous ListView) and the header is added as one of those elements. This means it is not instantly available to call findViewById() - a layout pass is needed before it is attached to the NavigationView.

For version 23.1.1 of the Support Library, you can now get a reference to the header view using getHeaderView():

View headerLayout = navigationView.getHeaderView(0); // 0-index header

This has the advantage of working on headers added via XML and via code.

If you are still using 23.1.0, as per the related bug, you can inflate the header in code and use findViewById() on that:

View headerLayout = 
    navigationView.inflateHeaderView(R.layout.navigation_header);
panel = headerLayout.findViewById(R.id.viewId);
// panel won't be null

Until you move to 23.1.1.

Now with the 23.1.1 release of the design support library, you can use

NavigationView navigationView = (NavigationView) findViewById(R.id.your_nav_view_id);
View header = navigationView.getHeaderView(0)
TextView text = (TextView) header.findViewById(R.id.textView);